My family and I just spent an amazing week at our cabin in the woods. It was peaceful, relaxing and easy. The cabin has only what is necessary, essential and very few ‘extras’. By extras I mean CRAP. We don’t have loads of books, papers, boxes, spare toys, random electronics and assorted other things we haven’t used in ages. The place always seems to be orderly and our focus there is on having fun, not on moving our crap from place to place. My son was the first one to really zero in on this — he said he loves it there because it’s just so easy and simple. Which begs the question, why don’t we live like this in our main home?

I’ve been pondering that question for the past 24 hours. Since we arrived home, I’m overwhelmed with the amount of organizing, cleaning, straightening and sorting I have to do. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not a pig or a hoarder. I’m also not OCD on cleanliness. On the spectrum of clean and organized, I fall in the ‘more’ clean and organized range – but there is definitely room for improvement. Which this leads to this blog — I figure if I’m accountable to myself and actually publish a diary of my attempts to get this place humming, then perhaps I’ll stick with it. Come, join me on my journey and we’ll see where it leads.

Day one: It’s time to wrap up Christmas and have a little less jolly in the house. Wish me luck that I get it done today (with the help of my 11 and 13 year old elves). I’m a bit anxious about starting, probably because I have to lug boxes up and down stairs to store it all, but very much looking forward to the good feeling of it all being put away.

Here’s the before:

And about 5 hours later, I’m done! I have to say, I wanted to quit half way through my project and put it off until tomorrow. While I have tons of energy pulling everything out in early December, the enthusiasm isn’t as great in early January. I took a little break, ate some Christmas candy and somehow got it all done by 4:30pm.

Here’s during and after:

My son had a playdate this afternoon, and as I drove to pick him up I came up with a process I’ll follow to conquer the clutter in the rest of the house. I’m planning to dive into defining that process tomorrow, though. For the remainder of today, I’m done with dust and boxes and going to enjoy the evening with my family and TV.